The Enemy initially blocked off chunks of history to prevent War-era Gallifrey from contacting pre-War era Gallifrey to prepare them for the War, but as the War progressed the walls between the pre-War era and the War era thinned. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)

The war's coming, and nothing's going to stop it. Us against them, our pilots against their pilots. Even Mother isn't going to come out of this without a few bruises. This isn't a historical war. You do realise that, don't you? This isn't about territory, or power, or anything like that. It's a war of fundamentals. The enemy's going to change everything, if it can. Even if the Homeworld wins, there'll be... oh, huge amounts of disruption. Disruption at every level.Lolita[src]

In the 2nd year of the War, the Faction took advantage of the confusion caused by the War and sent its Remote shock-troops to attack planets significant to the Great Houses, including Simia KK98. The Faction hoped that the Houses wouldn't see any connection between them and the Remote, but the Houses very easily deduced that the Faction were behind the attacks. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

The armies of the Great Houses, the Enemy, and Faction Paradox fought great battles across the surface of Mercy, killing the 150 human colonists already living there. This came to an end when one of the powers changed history so that, twenty generations before the fighting on Mercy, the Arbiturm bombed the planet with blacklight warheads, rendering it an inhospitable wasteland. (PROSE: Holding Pattern)

In the 5th year of the War, the major powers attempted to negotiate peace with the Venue Accords. The Accords lasted one picosecond and concluded that peace was an impossibility. The Book of the War summarised them as "an agreement to disagree". In response to the failure of the Accords, the Second Wave was created. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

As the Faction was busy retreating from the Second Wave, a pre-War-Era babel hid within Isaac Newton's timeline and attempted to rewrite human history into a weapon against the Enemy. Detecting that posthuman civilisation could be replaced with a "constant sacrifice of fresh bodies and fresh blood" in service of the Great Houses, the Pilots' Coterie used praxis to send three pilots — including Erasmus — to the 17th century to resurrect Nate Silver as an instrument to prevent the babel's interference. A small Faction mission led by Mother Sphinx became involved to ensure that the Gregorian Compact wasn't written out of history; they recruited Greenaway to spy on Silver. Larissa followed the babel and, after an encounter with the Faction, hid within Aphra Behn's timeline. The involved parties all gathered at Saloman's House in 1671, where the babel escaped unharmed due to Larissa mistaking Silver to be the babel's host. A second confrontation occurred in 1683, when the babel attempted to install Silver as an immortal puppet leading the Service: Larissa stabbed Newton with her continuity needle, forcing out the babel for it to be defeated by Erasmus. Silver stopped the needle from erasing Newton from history and the Faction conducted rituals to heal time. (PROSE: Newtons Sleep)

In the 29th year of the War, while Cwej was recovering from his regeneration during his stay at the Gauntlet, the Great Houses decided to use him in their Army of One project without his knowledge. The Cwejen were created from Chris' timeline. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

As the War progressed through its fourth decade, direct combat began being dropped by the Great Houses for more psychological tactics based upon principles of subversion and "cultural impregnation". (PROSE: The Book of the War)

Straxus and Septimus continued to live on VictorianEarth. In an effort to catch the attention of the Great Houses, they founded Straxus Imperial, an auction company which they used to circulate artefacts not supposed to have been discovered until later points in history.

In 1893, while Sherlock was pretending to be dead, an emergency setting of Straxus' Time Ring overrode Bernice Summerfield's Time Ring and brought her to London, where she found refuge with Mycroft Holmes. With Mycroft exposed to a time traveller, Septimus committed a series of murders all relating to the number seven in the hopes that it would cause Mycroft to think so intensely about the concept of "seven" as to summon the Seventh Doctor through quantum mnemonics. When Bernice and Mycroft confronted Straxus and Septimus, the ripples in time caught the attention of Straxus at an earlier point in his timeline. The older Straxus was imprisoned for changing history and Septimus was taken for dissection. The younger Straxus then briefly met with Bernice in the Time Vortex. (AUDIO: The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel)

Trna, Martayne, and Zeller of Faction Paradox worked together to put Hitchbot in 2010sPhiladelphia as a lure for the Compound, an aspect of the Enemy. Six of the Compound went on a mission to decapitate Hitchbot to "allow the disorderly incorrect timeline to proceed". All but one were captured by Trna and Martayne. The survivor, alone and confused, returned to the Compound lair in a hidden sector of space-time at One Liberty Place, revealing the lair's location to the Faction. Some of the data gained by the Faction was given to the Great Houses and the captured Compound creatures were given to Godfather Stendec. (PROSE: Houses of Cards)

When the War-time powers began using weapons which put the spirits of history in danger, the Faction sent Cousin Andraiz to Tonton Macoute's prison in Cyclone Tracy to find a solution, a "cure-all to time". After gathering the necessary ingredients (two timeships, Demi and Medea; the reflection of an Enemy agent; the ground bones of House Military soldiers; and the shadow of a Faction soldier), Macoute made a "cure-all" which attracted loa. However, the "cure-all" was nothing but bait, and Macoute consumed the loa to attain their god-like aspects. Before leaving Andraiz, Macoute explained that, in a way, he would be fixing the Faction's problem: "There's only one way to significantly change an ecosystem: introduce a predator." (PROSE: Tonton Macoute) However, despite having the powers of a god, Macoute somehow died. (PROSE: A Hundred Words from a Civil War)

Cousins Jezebella, Darius, and Fen visited the post-apocalyptic ruins of Kent after it was ravaged by a battle of the War involving the army of the Seventh Son of the Seventh Sun. They encountered Vermis Superior collecting bodies for young Vermis Superior to feed on. Jezebella and Darius were killed and added to the food pile. Fen then witnessed the Were-Crows feeding on the adult Vermis Superior and becoming the final aspect of the Enemy. (PROSE: Life-Cycle)

As the War is a war throughout all history, then the War never 'ends'. As such, all smaller scale conflicts are, in a sense, merely an extension of this 'True' War. On one level, local conflicts can be seen as echoes of the hostilities, latent throughout the structure of history itself. But, there is also some hard evidence of smaller scale conflicts, and in some cases, even individual combatants, being co-opted by the various War Powers for their own ends.The Great Houses And Us[src]

In 2157, an alien race began their invasion of Earth. (PROSE: Lucifer Rising) The first invaders attacked London, herding the local politicians into Parliament Square to be exterminated. As the invaders wiped out scattered cities as a demonstration of their superiority, Earth society collapsed overnight. (PROSE: Alien Bodies) Izzy Ring and her brother P.J. lived in a work camp run by the Invaders in California. The invasion ended nearly ten years after it began when a timeship exploded in London in an event later called "the Source". Though the explosion destroyed the Invaders, it also fragmented the timeship's inhabitants throughout time, and temporal shrapnel created saints throughout the world. Time-sensitiveRevelators named these saints and gave them stories, which were spread by the Humanist Church through films; each viewing imbued audience belief into a new interpretation of the saint. Homogeny and Hegemony, seeking to regain their permanence and join the Empire, recruited these "possibilities", but none of them could manage time in the way that was needed, so Hegemony and Homogeny tried convincing Izzy Ring to kill "Caroline" and create a paradox that would please their superiors. However, P.J. stopped Izzy by sacrificing himself to become a saint. Their plan defeated, Homogeny and Hegemony themselves became saints in Trafalgar Square. (PROSE: A Star's View of Caroline)

Romana dispatched two of her most trusted agents, Gandar and Cavis, to capture Compassion while she transformed into a Type 102 TARDIS in Avalon. While the agents managed to almost start a nuclear war between humans and avalonians, they did not capture Compassion, who escaped with the Eighth Doctor and Fitz Kreiner. (PROSE: The Shadows of Avalon)

Lineacrux recruited Robert Scarratt to captain The Brakespeare into the Maw, punish Entarodora, and finish her mission. Compassion witnessed a potential future where Scarratt's voyage was successful and the biodata research led to the Great Houses harnessing the power of the Maw to obliterate Earth from history, so she contacted Scarratt before he got on The Brakespeare and showed him the consequences of success.

The Brakespeare was infiltrated by agents of the Celestis, the Enemy, Faction Paradox, and Entarodora. The Brakespeare's voyage ended in a disastrous meeting with The San Grael. A timeship containing the severed head of Scarratt escaped The Brakespeare and gravitated back towards the edges of the Maw, where it was found by the Great Houses in the 32nd year of the War, who learned of the entire debacle through the head's memories and prevented it from ever happening. (PROSE: The Brakespeare Voyage)

With the Faction out of the picture, the Great Houses began threatening the Osirian Court. In response, Sutekh brought his armies of Mal'akh to the area around the Mediterranean Sea in the 15th century, a crucial point in history. The Great Houses sent Merytra Ellainya to influence the humans into destroying the Mal'akh, but she was captured. The Houses were forced to agree to a peace treaty to keep history intact. In the treaty, the Houses rededicated the Faction Paradox shrine in Civita to Sutekh. (AUDIO: Coming to Dust)

Back in the past, the Eighth Doctor convinced all the TARDISes to not break the shield around Planet 5, but one TARDIS accidentally did, unleashing the Fendahl Predator. Just as the hermit planned, the Predator was attracted to Mictlan, home of the Celestis. The Predator feasted on the Celestis, utterly destroying them. The Doctor coordinated the TARDISes into working together to push Mictlan away from the main universe so that the Predator wouldn't be able to return. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5) The Shift managed to escape the dying Mictlan with several other Celestis servants by hijacking one of the timeships. They landed on a world at the beginning of the Spiral Politic. The Shift eventually found its way into a copy of The Book of the War. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

Faction Paradox's warfleet (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles) travelled to Romana III's Gallifrey just before the start of the War, at the same time that Compassion was forcibly taken to the planet with the Eighth Doctor and Fitz Kreiner inside of her. The pre-War-era Eighth Doctor was on the verge of being overtaken by the Faction biodata virus at that time. The Faction successfully took the Capitol by force. They resurrected Greyjan the Sane using a remembrance tank and had him take Romana's place as Lord President; the nature of Greyjan's previous Presidency meant that Gallifrey began merging with the Eleven-Day Empire. Using their newfound control over the Web of Time, the Faction began altering the history of Romana's Gallifrey, erasing five of the six founders of Time Lord society and undoing the creation of the eight copies of Romana's Gallifrey.

But there was one variable that the Faction did not account for. The Doctor's original TARDIS — previously devastated in the events that led to him starting to travel in Compassion — contained within it the potentiality of the timeline where the Third Doctorregenerated due to radiation from Metebelis III and was never infected with a biodata virus. The stress of containing this timeline warped the TARDIS, turning it into the vast Edifice which loomed in the sky above Gallifrey. The Eighth Doctor journeyed into the heart of the Edifice, where he had a confrontation with Grandfather Paradox. The Doctor chose to use the unstable power of the Edifice to restore the Metebelis timeline and erase Romana's Gallifrey from history to spare its inhabitants from the rule of Faction Paradox and the horrors of the War. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell) The ensuing explosion eradicated the entire sector of space containing Kasterborous, and with it the Faction Paradox warfleet. (PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles)

At an earlier point in his timeline, the Eighth Doctor found himself in the War-era and tried to send a hypercube to his Gallifrey for help with a member of Faction Paradox in 2002San Francisco. While the Doctor believed that hypercubes were impossible to intercept, the Faction Paradox member did just that. When asked how he did it, the Faction Paradox member replied, "Maybe there's no one home on Gallifrey... Or maybe the whole planet's being destroyed, and undestroyed, and destroyed, and you just caught them at the wrong moment." (PROSE: Unnatural History)

As the warship began nearing the end of its three-billion year journey, Faction Paradox of an earlier period of the War established a Remote colony on the warship. When Anathema did finally reach Earth, it was disarmed by the Eighth Doctor. (PROSE: Interference - Book Two)

The War quickly spread across the universe, with the Time Lords becoming greatly allied with the Cyberlords. The Time Lords' superior temporal technology initially allowed them a string of victories against the Enemy. Success seemingly assured, the Doctor left the frontline to hold the rank of Lord President on Gallifrey. The Master then defected to the Enemy's side, turning the tides of the War by providing them with Gallifreyan technology.

Now equal technologically, the Enemy's vastly superior numbers allowed them to quickly become the winning side of the War. After Andred was killed in battle with Enemy forces, Lord President Admiral Doctor decided to destroy the universe using the Armageddon Sapphire before the Enemy could win the War. (PROSE: The Quantum Archangel)

The Remote were perhaps even more unpredictable; their anarchistic nature utterly committed them to the overthrow of whichever the dominant power was at any given time. They were also unbound from linearity, resulting in Remote members like Compassion interacting with people from before the start of the War.

From what they assumed was the safe vantage point of non-existence, the Celestis treated the War as a game, sometimes interfering on the Homeworld's behalf and sometimes supplying the enemy with weaponry. (PROSE: The Book of the War)

The War: In Alien Bodies, the conflict between the Time Lords and their enemy was introduced as just "the war", without any capitalisation. This lowercase improper title was used until The Ancestor Cell, which first called it "the War". "The War" is by far the most common title for the conflict in the Faction Paradox series – which makes sense, since most stories in the series are set during it.

Second War in Heaven: The Book of the War used the phrase "War in Heaven" to describe the War, but it also suggested that the Yssgaroth wars could be seen as a "first great War in Heaven", and it mentioned Homeworlder speculations that "only some kind of outside corruption could result in a Second War in Heaven". However, the title "Second War in Heaven" was specifically never applied to the Houses' current war, and the next sentences immediately discredited the Homeworlders' theory (and, with it, the "Second War in Heaven" appellate).